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EcommerceHaving your business visible in your local search environment is one of the most important factors to an SEO campaign. There are a huge variety of reasons for this, but one of the most important being that if you run for example, a delivery service in location x, you probably want to ensure that all the potential customers from location x can find you. You want to ensure that while driving the right results from the right locations you can also limit the not so relevant results from say the wrong locations or the wrong services.
There are a range of methods for getting your business local SEO friendly, with some being more complicated than others. All these methods work towards the same goal – making your business more visible to your target audience. In the past, you would just focus on getting your page rank as high as possible, while this still being important there are other factors to consider. The search engine results page (SERP) is ever evolving and more features are being added. One of the key additions to note is the Google Maps listings results. These listings are highly visible to users on both desktop and mobile and will often provide nice summary of what your business does along with a link to your site. Keeping up to date with how your business can be listed on the SERP will allow you to seize new ranking opportunities and take a lead over your competitors.
This brings us to the 3 simple steps to help your business succeed in its local environment:
Google MyBusiness
Having a verified local business on Google MyBusiness is possibly one easiest ways to get your business on the map (literally). Anyone can set this up, it is quite as simple as just filling out all the information fields and ensuring that your core services/keywords are highlighted in your profile. Once all this is done, you will need to verify your business. This is very simple – fill out your address and click verify now, Google will then send a code to that address to which you enter into the Google Business account once received.
Having a functioning Google Business account will open up great ranking opportunities for your business. Say you run a pizza shop called “Bob’s Pizza” in Castle Hill, having your Google Business page set up correctly should allow Google to list your business on the SERP for pizza related terms in castle hill. These sorts of listings are becoming much more visible in the SERP and are starting to get a lot more space which essentially means if you are getting a slice of it, you could be missing out on a lot.
As you can see from the above screen shot, businesses connected through Google are appearing at the top of the SERP through the map listing.
Your Sites Content
Having a website is great, you get it designed, it looks great, works great but then you need to get right traffic through to it. One of the most important ways to appearing organically is it actually ensuring that your business tells Google what you do. It might sound simple enough but if Google can’t tell that “Bob’s Pizza” is a pizza shop located in Castle Hill then it’s probably not going to Bob in the search results.
In saying this, it is extremely important not to spam your website full of keywords as this is can be detrimental to your rankings. Having a well written page that strongly tells Google what you do or what one of your services are without spamming keywords or not having any keywords is crucial.
Another factor with the content of your site is meta data. This comes in the form of page title and meta description. These are the things that a user will see when doing a search on Google. You essentially have 2-3 lines to tell Google and more importantly the users what you do. This is why it is important to fill that space with why your business is relevant to the users search phrase. If you are aiming to capture people in Castle Hill, and then make sure your meta data reads that you operate in Castle Hill.
Notice the top 4 organic listings for the search phrase “pizza shop Castle Hill” will either include the words “pizza” and/or “Castle Hill” in the page title and meta description.
Get some links!
Now you don’t have to be an expert link builder to get links for your business. Links come in all different forms and almost anyone can get them. Some quick and easy links you can grab for your business are local citations. These can be from any directories relevant to you. The relevance can be determined by location, industry or visibility. Getting these are quick and easy, similar to the Google Business account, you typically just need to sign up and fill in the information for your profile.
Another great way to get links is through promotional offers. You can create promotional offers and try to have them listed on sites in your area. For example if you offer services common with students, you might like to reach out to student bodies or educational websites to offer these offers. It is a win for you as you can get a great backlink back to your site and it is a win for them because they are getting a unique offer to their customers or peers.
If your business is offering something new in your area and you are up for a bit more of a challenge, you might like to look into guest posting or some small time outreach. This would involve reaching out to relevant websites or blogs and conveying your unique services with the aim of them allowing you to submit a bit of content with a link back to your site.
To wrap things up, it is important to know that SEO is an ever-evolving process and can seem quite daunting at first. Google is continuously adding features and mixing up the ranking factors which will continue to add more work to the learning process. In saying this, you can still make huge improvements on your business by taking the process step by step and ensuring your business it up to date with the essentials of local SEO.
For More Advanced SEO Services
As time goes by and more and more business are getting online, things are becoming more competitive. Click Click Media specialise in taking business and getting them to where they need to be in their local environment. If you would like more information on our services, don’t hesitate to get in contact!
